Tag Archives: experiments

If you’re ever in our neck of the woods, you know you’re invited to dinner. What’s on the menu, you ask? Well, tacos of course! Why tacos? Because they’re TACOS!!! I mean, who doesn’t love a good taco? Even dragons know tacos are the best.

You’ll find tacos of all kinds in our home; they’re a family favorite. Our little dragons eat them up. We’ve made everything from chicken and beef, to fish or potato tacos. No matter what kind of tacos we make, one thing is for sure, we always serve our tacos with a fresh batch of salsa.

The Recipe: What is salsa and how do you go about making a batch for your favorite dragon? We’re so glad you asked!

Salsa is a spicy tomato sauce, made from a blend of tomato and your favorite type of chile. Salsa is generally used in Latin American cooking and enjoyed with a variety of dishes, not to mention on its own with tortilla chips.

Directions:
On a flat, cast iron skillet – or flat grill – roast your vegetables, including garlic, until nicely toasted. Immediately after roasting, place your vegetables in a plastic container with lid until cooled. (This helps remove the skins easily.) Once cooled, carefully remove the skin from the tomatoes and jalapeños.
In a blender, place your water, Better Than Bouillon, and cloves of garlic. Blend these for a moment to fully incorporate the garlic. Add your jalapeños. Add your tomato, removing any hardened centers. Blend all ingredients by hitting the pulse button on the blender three to four times, with a second between each pulse. Pour into your favorite mason jar, and enjoy!
(Tip: If you’re concerned about the salsa being too hot for your dragons, remove all seeds and veins from the chiles while removing skins. This will give you plenty of flavor but reduce some of the heat.)

The Experiment: We all know dragons love tacos, but serving hot salsa is a no-no. Just how hot is HOT? Let’s try an experiment and explore the wild world of chiles, then see how our taste buds take the heat!

In our home, our dragons prefer salsa made with Pepperoncini, Anaheim, or Poblano chiles. But, just for fun, let’s see how hot we can take it before we start breathing fire!

Mom is the weakest of all, no surprise. She likes the mildest of the mild chiles. JAG is a little braver, eating salsa which makes his nose itch, but still enjoying the flavor. Little Lady doesn’t really like it at all. Hmmm. T enjoys salsa, but feels the same way Mom does about the heat. Mouse, she’s amazing. She can eat half way up this chile diagram without blinking an eye! And Pop, well he’s the king of us all. Nose itching, eyes watering; he can go three-fourths of the way up the chart and still keep on eating. Wow! Can you stand the heat?

The Giveaway: Now’s your chance! Care to try your hand at winning this adorable book, including a dragon of your own? Enter HERE for a chance to win one (1) of five (5) Dragons Love Tacos Book and Toy Sets (ARV: $17.99 each).

(NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Enter between 12:00 AM Eastern Time on April 3, 2017 and 12:00 AM on May 1, 2017. Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia who are 13 and older. Winners will be selected at random on or about May 5, 2017. Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.)

And stay tuned because…

The Sequel: Oh, no! It seems tacos have become so popular there will be no more tacos in world as of May 2nd! What will we do? Pre-order your copy of Dragons Love Tacos 2 and help the dragons #SaveTheTacos.

If you’re ever in SoCal, just let us know. Send us an email, place your order, and taco night it will be. Unlike these dragons, however, be prepared for some pretty hot salsa. There’s no sense in doing things half way.

In an ever-increasing attempt to play as hard as we work, I thought we would knock out a few more “pins” and try something absolutely new. I would love to continue my post with a phenomenal success story, with pictures to prove our triumph; however, it was an epic fail! (laughing)

My kids really like glow sticks. (Can you name a kid who doesn’t?) So I thought we would attempt to take something we already like and change it up. There were three great “pins” I was very excited about.

What the Fairies is supposed to look like, but ours turned out nothing like it. (sigh)

The first activity we tried was “fairies in a jar”. The concept is extremely simple. Take a glass jar, a few glow sticks, and some diamond glitter; cut a few of the glow sticks and shake the contents into the jar; add some diamond glitter; shake the jar and, wallah, … Fairies in a Jar! The problem? The glow solution didn’t shake into the jar all nice and pretty. It kind of drizzled down the side of the jar and looked like a gloopy mess. Adding glitter was rather pointless, as you couldn’t see the effects.

So, on to the next experiment. We thought we would try another “pin” in which we take a small bottle of bubble solution and empty the contents of a glow stick into the bottle. The idea is to get “glowing bubbles”. The problem? The solution sank to the bottom of the bottle and wouldn’t mix with the bubble solution at all! Another experiment gone wrong. (laughing)

For our third and final trick, mommy was going to put glow stick solution in the bathtub and let them take a “glowing bath”. Yeah, nope! It just wasn’t our night.

I’m not sure if we just bought cheap glow sticks or if others have run across the same problems, but we were kind of bummed. These all looked like awesome ways to have some fun and try something new.

I will reserve one “pin” for next year though. One thoughtful person had the idea to put glow sticks into Easter eggs and do a hunt at night! Now, that seems like a great idea and I can’t see how that wouldn’t work.

Oh, well. The night was an epic fail, but at least we tried. That is what experimentation is all about, right?

What is the neatest thing you have done with glow sticks (or any other glowing variation)?

Like this:

Today proved to be a particularly exciting day on the science front, at least in our neck of the woods. There is nothing quite like studying ice on a hot summer day!

Our mad science capers had us exploring all things ice. We talked about temperature (both Celsius and Fahrenheit) and how ice is affected by other elements.

The main focus of our day, was talking about the freezing and melting points of water. To help the children gain a firmer grasp on how ice melts, we prepped a few balloons with water last night and tucked them into the fridge.

This morning, we took our solid balls of ice out of the freezer and did some experiments. The first was to see how slowly ice of that size would melt on its own. The second was to lower the melting point by adding some salt. To help the children see this experiment a little better, we added a few drops of food coloring to the top of each ice ball and watched the salt “eat” through the layers.

The children liked watching the colors drop through the ice and how pretty they looked. I would like to think they also walked away with a better understanding and clearer picture of temperature.

For fun, we had frozen several additional ice balls to be played with. After our exciting experiments, we headed into the backyard for some ice bowling! We dug out plastic bowling pins and had a blast knocking them down. The kids had a great time, but had very cold fingers!

Ice bowling was so popular, there will definitely need to be a repeat!

(We did also make sure to spend a little while exploring through our microscope. Today was algae, cross sections of corn and earthworms, and daffodil stems. Lots of fun and very pretty!)

If you had to freeze water in the shape of a ball, which method do you think would work best?

It wasn’t until high school that I developed an appreciation for science. There, we were able to do fun experiments; mix chemicals, dissect frogs, and other fun things like that. I wanted to make sure that our kids had the opportunity to truly enjoy science at a much younger age. During summer, we step outside our regular curriculum and shake things up.

Our “rubber” egg

As I mentioned in Summer School: Geography Fun, we do ten weeks of summer school. One day each week is dedicated to science experiments and over the last couple of years we have found some doozies. Some are from my school days, some from my husband’s, and some just from a basic search on the internet.

Homemade Crystals

When picking experiments, I try to ensure that each week covers a different area of science. So, for example, one week we might be covering magnetism and the next, micro-organisms. This keeps us interested and ensures that more topics are covered.

Not sure where to find just the right experiment or what to cover? Try Kids Science Experiments! I have found this website to be very helpful and organized. There is something for just about everyone.

Lastly, make sure to let your family know your plans. They are wonderful helps when it comes to ideas. My father-in-law added the crowning touch a few summers ago when he had us over to do a rabbit dissection. The kids learned so much from him and he loved being able to be involved.

Volcano time!

“Call to me and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you know not.” Jeremiah 33:3 The Bible reminds us that the Lord will show us His might hand in all of His creation. If we seek Him and ask Him to show us the wonders of His work, we will truly be amazed at what a wonderful God He is.